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14 Dec 2011

The Hidden

The last thrilling instalment in The Hollow trilogy, The Hidden is a long awaited conclusion that truly puts the emotional cherry on top of this series. Full of starcrossed love, mysterious vengeance and a pretty dress or two, this book is one that anyone will love, fans of Verday or not.

The main plot of this book is waiting for Abbey’s death day, and though the Revenants are hardly a big help she seems to have come to an acceptance of who she is and what she feels for Caspian. I was glad to find Abbey seemed more sure of herself, and it was admirable that she was so calm in the face of her death. Having skipped the second book in the trilogy I was surprised at how easy it was to pick up on what I’d missed, and though I don’t recommend it it was impressive how easily Verday managed to display the facts in a carefully concealed manner.

Caspian. Oh, what can I say about Caspian? Charming, gorgeous, a real knight in shining armour, he seems to have perfected the selfless and caring manner that other YA heroes sadly lack. The love between Abbey and Caspian is beautiful at worst, heart breaking at best, and though I’m sure they would have disagreed the ‘no touching’ thing only helped make their story more romantic and fairy tale like. However, though it was cute I found myself slightly unaffected in their struggles. Yes, a happy ending would be nice, but I could deal quite easily if the author decided to leave us on a more tragic note.

And the ending was tragic. It may have been right, but it left me with an unsatisfactory sense of ‘What, that’s it? Capiche?’, as if they were right back where they started, but with slightly different roles. It was the best thing to do and resolved everything quite nicely, but I would have liked a bit more of a…’bang’, should we say, with some more fireworks and at least one massive supernatural battle that nearly destroys the world (okay, maybe not, that’s already been done in Buffy).

Sad as it may be, The Hidden is a wonderful ending to this trilogy that takes you on a very emotional roller coaster. You may not like the ending, but that doesn’t mean it hasn’t left as big an impact on you as if you had.